WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.304 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:00:03.304 --> 00:00:05.664 align:middle line:90% 00:00:05.664 --> 00:00:07.670 align:middle line:90% Oh, look at you. 00:00:07.670 --> 00:00:09.710 align:middle line:90% Whoa. 00:00:09.710 --> 00:00:10.500 align:middle line:90% Look at you. 00:00:10.500 --> 00:00:13.400 align:middle line:90% So nice to see you all. 00:00:13.400 --> 00:00:14.217 align:middle line:90% Thank you, Tyler. 00:00:14.217 --> 00:00:16.550 align:middle line:84% Thank you everyone at the Poetry Center for all the work 00:00:16.550 --> 00:00:19.483 align:middle line:84% you do to make all of these things possible. 00:00:19.483 --> 00:00:21.990 align:middle line:90% 00:00:21.990 --> 00:00:24.840 align:middle line:84% It's an honor to be able to introduce you tonight, Mark. 00:00:24.840 --> 00:00:27.560 align:middle line:84% And I have to say, I kind of went through various scenarios 00:00:27.560 --> 00:00:30.020 align:middle line:90% of how to do this in my head. 00:00:30.020 --> 00:00:33.230 align:middle line:84% I thought I could just list off all the amazing awards 00:00:33.230 --> 00:00:35.480 align:middle line:84% and things you've gotten-- the Guggenheim, the Stegner 00:00:35.480 --> 00:00:38.892 align:middle line:84% Fellowship, two fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center, 00:00:38.892 --> 00:00:40.350 align:middle line:84% the National Endowment of the Arts, 00:00:40.350 --> 00:00:42.480 align:middle line:84% but you could read that anywhere. 00:00:42.480 --> 00:00:44.600 align:middle line:84% So then I thought, I could just say 00:00:44.600 --> 00:00:46.980 align:middle line:84% you have the best hair in poetry, 00:00:46.980 --> 00:00:49.590 align:middle line:90% which would entirely be true. 00:00:49.590 --> 00:00:52.070 align:middle line:84% But maybe not necessarily visible to the folks 00:00:52.070 --> 00:00:52.920 align:middle line:90% in back yet. 00:00:52.920 --> 00:00:57.140 align:middle line:84% So I thought maybe I'd start just by reading, 00:00:57.140 --> 00:01:00.037 align:middle line:90% I think, six lines from a poem. 00:01:00.037 --> 00:01:00.870 align:middle line:90% I think it's recent. 00:01:00.870 --> 00:01:03.490 align:middle line:90% "My Local Dead." 00:01:03.490 --> 00:01:06.590 align:middle line:84% "I sometimes hear the call to return, 00:01:06.590 --> 00:01:10.640 align:middle line:84% Come back to the shady valley with its reliable breeze, 00:01:10.640 --> 00:01:15.070 align:middle line:84% The crumbling brindle bluffs, a brandy old fashioned made with 00:01:15.070 --> 00:01:15.700 align:middle line:90% 7UP, 00:01:15.700 --> 00:01:18.850 align:middle line:84% Waiting for me on the sticky bar of the Golden Frog 00:01:18.850 --> 00:01:22.540 align:middle line:84% Recognition registering with those I meet 00:01:22.540 --> 00:01:28.350 align:middle line:84% When they see my father looking back from inside my aging face." 00:01:28.350 --> 00:01:33.600 align:middle line:84% Even in those six little lines, we hear this percussive 00:01:33.600 --> 00:01:37.270 align:middle line:84% alliteration-- return reliable, brindle brandy-- 00:01:37.270 --> 00:01:42.480 align:middle line:84% the slant rhyme of bluff and up, and the poignant acknowledgment 00:01:42.480 --> 00:01:44.250 align:middle line:84% of the fact that we all, eventually, 00:01:44.250 --> 00:01:47.700 align:middle line:84% turn into our parents in one way or another. 00:01:47.700 --> 00:01:52.290 align:middle line:84% And I think that to offer one way to explain 00:01:52.290 --> 00:01:55.060 align:middle line:84% all of that goodness packed in six lines, 00:01:55.060 --> 00:01:59.640 align:middle line:84% I want to refer to a quote from one of Wunderlich's most 00:01:59.640 --> 00:02:00.850 align:middle line:90% recent interviews. 00:02:00.850 --> 00:02:04.600 align:middle line:84% I think it was recent, where he says very provocatively, 00:02:04.600 --> 00:02:08.759 align:middle line:84% I'm interested in writing poems, not poetry. 00:02:08.759 --> 00:02:13.085 align:middle line:84% And I think I want to linger on that point because, of course, 00:02:13.085 --> 00:02:15.080 align:middle line:90% it can't be entirely true. 00:02:15.080 --> 00:02:18.280 align:middle line:84% I mean, he's a director of Bennington writing seminars. 00:02:18.280 --> 00:02:20.505 align:middle line:84% And if you've read any of his other work, 00:02:20.505 --> 00:02:24.210 align:middle line:84% you know he knows his way around the world of poetry. 00:02:24.210 --> 00:02:29.230 align:middle line:84% But at a moment when poets, like other workers, 00:02:29.230 --> 00:02:34.480 align:middle line:84% feel an increased pressure to produce, in some of our cases, 00:02:34.480 --> 00:02:37.570 align:middle line:84% to the rhythm of academic promotion and the tenure 00:02:37.570 --> 00:02:42.430 align:middle line:84% calendar, for others, to the manic drums of a viral attention 00:02:42.430 --> 00:02:49.180 align:middle line:84% economy, Wunderlich is writing to a kind of different beat. 00:02:49.180 --> 00:02:52.510 align:middle line:84% He's writing on the clock of art driven 00:02:52.510 --> 00:02:56.810 align:middle line:84% by both immediacy and timelessness. 00:02:56.810 --> 00:03:00.910 align:middle line:84% And I take that as, I'm interested in writing poems, not 00:03:00.910 --> 00:03:05.320 align:middle line:84% poetry as an interest in process. 00:03:05.320 --> 00:03:07.840 align:middle line:84% And I also want to just note, I just 00:03:07.840 --> 00:03:12.850 align:middle line:84% used the word timelessness, which I generally dislike a lot. 00:03:12.850 --> 00:03:18.400 align:middle line:84% I often think it gets used as this orange construction 00:03:18.400 --> 00:03:23.350 align:middle line:84% cone that asks us to detour away from the timeliness of our most 00:03:23.350 --> 00:03:25.320 align:middle line:90% immediate concerns. 00:03:25.320 --> 00:03:28.730 align:middle line:84% But Wunderlich's poems are anything but a detour. 00:03:28.730 --> 00:03:32.420 align:middle line:84% They're knitted out of the materiality of the moment, 00:03:32.420 --> 00:03:35.770 align:middle line:84% whether they're inspired by a found collection of German 00:03:35.770 --> 00:03:39.560 align:middle line:84% immigrant house poems, as was his collection, 00:03:39.560 --> 00:03:43.690 align:middle line:84% "The Earth Avails," or inspired by contemporary political 00:03:43.690 --> 00:03:47.510 align:middle line:84% imperatives, as in the poem, "Don't Say Gay," 00:03:47.510 --> 00:03:50.890 align:middle line:90% in which he writes, quote-- 00:03:50.890 --> 00:03:54.930 align:middle line:84% "If you think our resolve is meek, we don't care. 00:03:54.930 --> 00:03:57.610 align:middle line:84% We dare a life of beauty and of love, 00:03:57.610 --> 00:04:01.120 align:middle line:84% of men napping naked on the couch in June 00:04:01.120 --> 00:04:03.620 align:middle line:84% with all the windows open to the world, 00:04:03.620 --> 00:04:06.350 align:middle line:84% fingers curled into a beloved's hair. 00:04:06.350 --> 00:04:10.660 align:middle line:84% There is no end to this, which cannot be unspoken from 00:04:10.660 --> 00:04:13.170 align:middle line:90% the air." 00:04:13.170 --> 00:04:16.529 align:middle line:84% When the world feels like it is so much, too 00:04:16.529 --> 00:04:19.560 align:middle line:84% much to witness and to bear, art can 00:04:19.560 --> 00:04:23.560 align:middle line:84% become reactionary to the whims of capitalism, 00:04:23.560 --> 00:04:27.460 align:middle line:84% to cultural mood swings, to Instagram influencers. 00:04:27.460 --> 00:04:32.340 align:middle line:84% But Wunderlich's poems never do that because they always reveal 00:04:32.340 --> 00:04:36.810 align:middle line:84% a poet more interested in quote, "writing poems than poetry," 00:04:36.810 --> 00:04:39.520 align:middle line:90% more entranced with the making. 00:04:39.520 --> 00:04:43.880 align:middle line:84% And I'll end with this longer quote about process from Mark-- 00:04:43.880 --> 00:04:46.340 align:middle line:84% "I feel most alive when I'm working 00:04:46.340 --> 00:04:50.000 align:middle line:84% on a poem, when all of my subjectivity, all 00:04:50.000 --> 00:04:53.100 align:middle line:84% of my faculties, everything I've read, 00:04:53.100 --> 00:04:56.090 align:middle line:84% my engagement with the language, the other languages I know, 00:04:56.090 --> 00:04:59.120 align:middle line:84% and the world around me are leaning toward me 00:04:59.120 --> 00:05:02.320 align:middle line:90% and wanting to be described. 00:05:02.320 --> 00:05:06.030 align:middle line:84% All of this goes into the making of a poem." 00:05:06.030 --> 00:05:08.850 align:middle line:84% Please join me in welcoming Mark Wunderlich. 00:05:08.850 --> 00:05:12.200 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE]